Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Have you guys had nothing go missing from the warehouses? The reason I ask is because I bought a container at the new IKEA here in Draper, Utah, and when I got home and opened it up, I was surprised to find nothing in it. It said nothing on the packaging about the container having nothing in it, so I think it may have been a mistake. I know you had to recently expand your warehouses to store the infinite supply of nothing, are you keeping nothing at an IKEA warehouse too?I wanted to keep nothing that I found in the container, but I had to use the container to store things in, so there wasn't room for nothing anymore. The nothing I found is probably in the living room somewhere, once you remove nothing from the container, it's hard to keep track of. If you need me to send you nothing since I didn' t actually pay for it, just let me know, it'll help if you could describe nothing so I'll know that you did really lose nothing.ThanksA.W.

To which I responded:

Another good question. Since we have redundant overlapping warehouses encompassing the entire universe, then we by default get a little bit of everything in them as well. Actually, our warehouses contain everything, but we try to downplay that because when you think about the vastness of the wide open space in the universe, everything is like a pile of dust somebody forgot to sweep up.

But, unfortunately, IKEA is part of "everything" so, yes, it is in one or more of our warehouses.

Don't be surprised that somebody shoved nothing in your container because we keep nothing anywhere. In fact, nothing is in atoms, in between molecules, pretty much anywhere you can't put anything, you'll find nothing.

As for your offer to send us nothing back, you can keep "it", they obviously don't know how to handle their inventory at IKEA. Stick it to the man!

4 comments:

As an expert on nothing -- see my blog http://on-nothing.livejournal.com/ I can empathize and sympathize with you. Nothing is definitely a problem, whether you receive it or whether you don't. Not everyone realizes, though, how important nothing is, not even IKEA.

There is a solution, though. And that is to discuss nothing at every opportunity. Nothing comes from nothing, King Lear said, and he was right. After all, he was nothing but a figment of Shakespeare's imagination.

You may indeed be a specialist (which is a type of expert), but to call yourself an “expert on nothing” seems a bit misleading. You address a very narrow view of nothing in your writings. In fact your constant nothing/something juxtapositions (though not all bad) achieve nothing only in the sense that they bring my interest in reading your words “to nothing”.

I suffered through reading your “paradox of nothing” posts. The mixed-metaphorical, dense syrup of illogic demonstrated here somehow rings hollow. I know that sometimes the implementation of wordiness as a smoke screen for an inadequate argument or indeed, no argument at all, can be edifying. But by never tying your argument to anything other than uninteresting philosophy or unfounded inferences you lack any framework that could create humor or even real thought. Personally, I am bored by boring ideas.

Overall, your arguments seem trite and pedantic. Certainly, you have achieved a type of negation, and I applaud you for that. But what’s next? Whatever “it” is, I’m sure that it will be something to you and nothing for me.

I am somewhat flattered that you are bored by my blogs, especially as you consider philosophy uninteresting. Perhaps you'd be more interested in shopping.

You ask what is next. Really, though, you are not interested in what I have to say because you only wish to hear yourself. That's ok. And there is plenty next: art, religion, the meaning of life... you name it, nothing is there.

We could have had fun, but you are a little peeved that somebody has stolen your thunder. I'm very interested in nothing and I don't mind if others are as well. You, on the other hand, seem to resent it.

Wow! You are flattered that the pre-eminent authority on nothing finds your nothing blogs boring? I can respect that.

But what’s with the shopping reference? Do you think that just because you are boring everybody else likes shopping? That seems to me to be a bit of a stretch. I know that there are some people who just can’t get enough shopping. They would shop for twigs and seeds if they could. In fact, some of them do! But those people are exactly like you, or at least, they are certainly nothing like me, so my automatic knee-jerk reaction is that they are exactly like you. You know, since there are only two types of people in this world, those who are exactly like you and those who are exactly like me. Oops, there I go again, doing exactly what you do. I must have forgot I was me due to your stunning insights.

Your insight never ceases to amuse me! How did you know that I wasn’t interested in what you “have to say”? Could it have had something to do with the fact that I had made that clear in my reply to your comment?

I must take a very slight exception to your next statement, “you only wish to hear yourself”. In the case of a conversation between me and you, yes, I would prefer to only hear myself. But you imply this is due to some arbitrary aversion to you and an unreasoning attraction to my own lyrical sweet voice. I won’t do more than touch on the fact that I’m typing, so I don’t get to hear myself during our exchanges. The fact is that I already informed you in the previous reply that you are not interesting because you are boring. I am not boring because I am interesting. So naturally, I would prefer to listen to myself. If that doesn’t make sense to you then I’m not really sure how deeply I should delve into the blatantly obvious to kindly condescend to a pseudo-nothing expert with less than a passing interest in nothing important.

I am intrigued by your statement “we could have had fun”. How could we have had fun? Could I use you as a frisbee? Could I make a board game out of you? Although I enjoy throwing a frisbee as much as the next guy, I prefer to throw regulation dog frisbees. It’s just my way. As for board games, I generally find them boring. But so as not to be putting words (that I don’t want to hear anyway) in your mouth I will ask you (making sure, of course that you understand that don’t care about your response) what you meant by that statement. What are you drivin’ at mister?

As for “stealing my thunder” I didn’t realize that you wanted it. Once you had my “thunder” what did you intend to do with it? I’ll tell you right now, if you are referring to flatulence, you can have my thunder. I have no need for such things. If you are about to make a thunder=nothing comment...yawn.

I appreciate that you think you are very interested in nothing. But you are actually interested in things that amount to nothing. That is to say, you are interested in boring things. I certainly do not resent your boring-ness. I appreciate, and even mentioned how you are so boring that you achieve a type of negation. I really admire that about you. Personally, I know that this is one of the most boring letters I have ever written, and since we have already established that I am interesting and you are not, that is more proof of the intensity, potency, and downright um, thunder of the powerful negation you wield. Again, I applaud you sir!

I do not resent that you think I resent the fact that others are interested in nothing, however, I appreciate that you probably developed that understanding from following my tireless work over the past 12 years on my nothing.net web site and other nothing writings. Why would I be trying to educate the world about nothing if I didn’t resent them being interested in nothing? Makes sense to me, if I’m you, which I’m not. So, it doesn’t.

And you have certainly worn me down by your final statement, I agree that you are an expert on nothing, as long as what you mean by that is that you don’t know anything. Truce?